WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH IT?
THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY
VOL. I.–MAY, 1862.–No. V.
The first blood that was shed in our Revolutionary struggle, was in
Boston, in March, 1770. The next at Lexington, in June, 1775.
The interval was filled with acts of coercion and oppression on the one
side and with complaints and remonstrances on the other. But the thought
of Independence was entertained by very few of our people, even for some
time after the affair at Lexington. Loyalty to the mother country was
professed even by those most clamorous in their complaints, and
sincerely so, too. The great majority thought that redress of grievances
could be obtained without severance from Great Britain.
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But events hurried the people on, and that which was scarcely spoken of
at the beginning of the struggle, soon became its chief object.
Is it not the same with our present contest with the South? We took up
arms to defend the Constitution, to sustain our Government, to maintain
the Union; and in the course of performing that work, it would seem as
if Emancipation was forced upon us, and as if it was yet to be the prime
object in view.
Lo! how much has already been done toward that end, even though not
originally intended! As our armies advance into the enemies’ country,
thousands of slaves are practically emancipated by the flight and
desertion of their rebel masters. The rules and articles of war have
been so altered by Congress as to forbid our military forces from
returning to bondage any who flee from it. The President has proposed,
and Congress has entertained, the proposition of aiding the States in
emancipation. Fremont, who has been regarded as the representative of
the emancipation feeling, has been restored to active command. And
multitudes of our people, who have hitherto considered themselves as
bound by the Constitution not to interfere with the subject, have become
open in the avowal that as slavery has been the cause of the evil, so it
must now be wiped out forever.
It would seem, therefore, as if it was inevitable that the question of
emancipation is to be thrust upon us, and we must be prepared to meet
it. It is in this view, and irrespective of the question of right and
wrong in slavery, that some considerations present themselves, which can
not be ignored.
The difference of race between the white and the negro will ever keep
them apart, and forbid their amalgamation. One or the other must
ultimately go to the wall, and it is worth our while to see what time
is doing with the question: ‘Which must it be in this country?’
Hence it is important to note the progress of both the races with us.
In the course of seventy years, that is, from the census of 1790 to that
of 1860, the slave population has increased from 697,897 to 4,002,996.
So that our colored population is now six times as great as when our
Government was formed.
During the same period the free population has increased from 3,231,975
to 27,280,070, or nearly nine times as great as in 1790. Of this
increase about 3,000,000 is the result of emigration; so that the
native-born population has increased to about 24,000,000, or about eight
times as many as in the beginning of our Government. If due allowance be
made for those born of emigrant parents,[A] it would seem that the two
races have about kept pace with each other in their natural increase.
Carl Schurz, in his speech at the Cooper Institute, in New-York, put to
his audience a pertinent inquiry: ‘You ask me, What shall we do with our
negroes, who are now 4,000,000? And I ask you, What will you do with
them when they will be 8,000,000–or rather, _what will they do with
you?_ Surely, surely the question involves the greatest problem of the
age.
If our fathers had met the question seventy years ago, we should not now
behold the spectacle of 6,000,000 of our people in rebellion, and an
army of 400,000 men arrayed against the integrity of the Union. And we
may well profit by the example so far as to ask ourselves the question,
What will be the condition of our country and of our posterity, fifty
years hence, if we, too, shirk the question as painful and difficult of
solution?
Whether ultimate and universal emancipation will be one of the necessary
modes of dealing with it, time must show. In the mean time there is a
question immediately pressing upon us. Day by day our armies are
advancing among them, and every news of a contest that comes, brings us
accounts of the swarms of ‘contrabands’ who are flocking to us for
protection. At one place alone, Port Royal, S.C., the Government Agent
reports that there are at least fifteen thousand slaves deserted by
their masters, and thus practically emancipated. Untaught and unwonted
to take care of themselves–our armies consuming the fruits of the earth
and finding no employment for these ‘National Freedmen’–the danger is
great that want, and temptation, and the absence of the government to
which they have been accustomed, may yet drive them to become lawless
hordes, preying on all.
The same state of things must of necessity exist wherever the
slave-owner flies from the approach of our armies; and we have now
presented to us the alternative of either allowing their state to be
worse by reason of their emancipation, or better, according as the wise
and the humane among us may deal with the subject.
Some measures, we learn, have already been initiated for the emergency.
‘The Educational Commission’ of Boston, at the head of which is Governor
Andrews; ‘The Freedman’s Relief Association,’ in New-York, with Judge
Edmonds as its President; and a similar society in Philadelphia, of
which Stephen Colwell is Chairman, are societies of large-hearted men
and women, banded together, as they express it, to ‘teach the freedmen
of the colored race civilization and Christianity; to imbue them with
notions of order, industry, economy and self-reliance, and to elevate
them in the scale of humanity, by inspiring them with self-respect.’
The task is certainly a high and holy one, and eminently necessary. How
far it will be sustained by the Government or the people, or how far the
purpose can be carried out with a race who have been intentionally kept
in profound ignorance, is part of the great problem that we are to
solve. But not all of it, by any means. There is much more for
enlightened patriotism and wise humanity yet to do, before the task
shall be accomplished and the work begun by the Revolution shall be
finished; and to prevent a conflict of races, which can end only in the
extermination of one or the other.
The 16,000,000 of natives who were once masters of this whole continent
are now dwindled into a few insignificant tribes, ‘away among the
mountains.’ Is such to be the fate of the negro also? Or has the spirit
of God’s charity so far progressed among us that, unlike our fathers, we
can redeem rather than destroy, can emancipate rather than enslave?
Be the answer to those questions what it may, there are other
considerations, immediately affecting ourselves as a nation and a race.
Slavery would seem to retard our advancement in both respects.
During the ten years from 1850 to 1860, the total population of our
country increased about 37 per cent.
From these facts, it would seem that, in the two States in which slavery
has decreased, the increase of the whites has been 55 and 56 per cent,
exceeding the average ratio of increase in the whole nation. While in
all the other States, where slavery has increased, none of them have
come up to the average national ratio of increase, and in one of them,
(South-Carolina,) the increase is not one quarter the national average.
In respect to South-Carolina, it is a remarkable fact that while she has
now nearly four tunes as many slaves as she had in 1790, her whole
population (slaves and all) is not three times what it then was, and her
free population is only a little more than twice its number in 1790. In
other words, while in seventy years her slave population has increased
four-fold, her free population has only a little more than doubled.[B]
These facts teach their own lesson; but they compel all who value the
Union and the peace of the nation, to ask how far they have had to do
with the troubles of nullification and secession, which for thirty years
have been plaguing us, and have now culminated in a terrible rebellion!